72nd Street Playhouse

350 East 72nd Street,

New York,
NY10021

Hey guys – I’m currently researching for a story on picturehouses/theatres in NY during the 1910s-20s….does anyone care to get in contact with memories/memories from relatives(!)…I’d really appreciate it – just to get an understanding of the ambience etc in this or any place like it…

Saw alot of movies here as a kid during the early to mid 70s. We called it the “dollar” theater because admission was, well, $1. I stopped going in ‘78 when they wouldn’t let me in to see Star Wars during it’s re-release without a parent. Sheesh it was only PG.

I was a vacation relief manager at CINEMA 5’s 72nd Street East Theatre in winter of late 1983. [Tom Cruise made his debut in “Risky Business” while I was there. It was very cold that winter. A lot of cougars from the upper east side would come to the theatre to be warmed up by Cruise dancing in his underwear.] Rose Mansfield, the manager who was in her seventies back then, lived across the way on the NE corner and would watch the changing of the marquee from her window every Thursday night on her day off, then call the theatre to say a letter was crooked. Perhaps this theatre is best known for its singular CLANKING RADIATOR on the side wall of the theatre. Otherwise, it could be remembered for having the tiniest of snack bars, where there were delightful non-English speaking Asian girls with a shoe box, cash, and no coin nor cash register necessary.

When Russ Meyer’s “Vixen” opened in New York on 5/16/69 it opened in 3 Manhattan locations. The 72nd St. Playhouse, The Regency & The Globe (43 St location). The ad said “the film that is breaking house records in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago is finally in New York”.

A photo of the 72nd Street Playhouse, circa 1916, can be found at the following website by typing in the word “Granada” in the “search” box: View link
The sign on the marquee advertises the attraction “Behind German Lines”, which I assume was during World War I. The design of the marquee and the attraction boards also suggests that the photo was taken during the teens.

This opened as the 540 seat 72nd St. Playhouse in 1914 and still had this name in 1930. By 1941 and in the 1943 and 1950 Film Daily Yearbook’s it was known as the Granada Theatre with a seating capacity of 599.

It was last known as the 72nd St. East Theatre and was demolished in 1985.

I remember the theater on 72nd and First. It played movies that were through their runs and were about to disappear from the big screen…if you missed something when it was first released, you could wait and catch it at 72nd St., nearly a year later. I saw “Jeremiah Johnson” and “Nickelodeon” here among others. Great small theater, I remember it well and it is so hard to believe it has been gone for so long.

This was a big part of my teenage years as I lived around the block at 315 East 68th…It was really more functional than plush in my memory with not much at all of a lobby but a large marquee with a vertical 72…Part of the AIT group – most of the chains theatres were on Long Island and sistered with the Kips Bay (listed here as Bay Cinema)…The 72nd did some foreign, some first run (notably the first Planet of the Apes daydating with Loews Capitol, and the first Shaft daydating with the DeMille) and a long stint in the early to mid 70s as the East Side’s lone $1.00 house where I spent many a Saturday night…In various stages, I saw a double bill of Frenzy/Play Misty for Me, State of Siege, SlapShot, Sounder, The Seduction of Mimi, The Long Goodbye, The Sting (notable for its two week $1 stint here, Z, and probably quite a few others here…It finished its life bouncing between the Cinema 5 and Walter Reade chains